Posts Tagged 'משרד האוצר'

Coming up this Sunday… – It’s HERE!

Published December 31, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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I need to sort out my time line, I know, but with the recent events and ongoing stuff at work you’ll understand and forgive this 24 hour delay. So, after promising something Sunday, then Tuesday, it has finally came, Wednesday, Dec 31st 2008.

Globes is the leading financial and IT publisher in Israel, issuing a monthly IT Magazine, by the exact name. IBM has bought some page space, 6 of them to be precise, dedicated entirely to Lotus Software. Excellent way to wrap up 2008!

Since IT Magazine doesn’t sport a website, I can’t send you links to the articles, but you can see them, scanned, at facebook. This is what you’ll find between the 6 page insert:

You can see and read the articles over at the facebook album.

Ministry of Finance – lesspaper office

Published October 17, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Last week, just before Yom Kipur, I drove up to Jerusalem to visit Sharon Ben-Haim (pictured to the left), the CTO of the Ministry of Finance. No, I wasn’t there to discuss the credit crisis, or meet the minister himself, but to have a private, one-on-four customer visit – between Sharon and Taro Pharmaceuticals, another Lotus customer.

Sharon’s lecture at our Lotus event back in September got great feedback from participants, and Taro, which were unable to attend, asked for a private visit – and Sharon was happy to showcase his work, again.

There are no screenshots that I can share (will ask Sharon to send me some), but basically we went over four areas of interest:
Document collaboration (that leads to) better inbox management
Fax servers (incoming/outgoing) and SMS integration
Notes/Domino 8 including Lotus Traveler
Open discussion

The highlight of the ministry’s use of Lotus Notes/Domino as a messaging platform has to be its document repository, which combines capabilities of Quickr and Quickplace.
A scenario we went over: a user wants to create a new document (text, spreadsheet, presentation, fax, etc) he/she goes to the department’s repository. There he chooses the template, recipients (to/cc/bcc), subject, authoring access and hit ‘Edit’. Based on the doc type he wants, the proper application opens up, already filled with the inserted information (to, subject, cc, date, doc #). Just create and save (on the DB). Now you have a single copy of that doc, which you can attach to an email. Ah, but here’s the killer feature (in my opinion) – the DB ‘knows’ who your recipient is, and sends the doc in the proper format: if the recipient is an employee – Lotus link and Lotus url (for web access); if the recipient is external – file attachment; if the recipient is a fax user – a fax cover letter will be added to the doc. Brilliant. And saves on paper, which is the important thing.

The ministry, like any other business in Israel, receives a lot of data as email attachments – analyst reports, media coverage, agreements, spreadsheets, presentations, you name it. The problems begins when you need to share that data with other people in your team/department, and hit ‘Forward’, adds 10-15 names, and hit ‘Send’. Now the messaging system holds multiple copies of the same document, overloading the e-mail system and filling up the storage. Sharon has built another DB, that detaches the document from the original email (similar to Lotus Quickr), and places a link instead. Now, there’s a single copy of that document, and you can share it with your team/colleagues, without putting to much pressure on your e-mail system.

Sharon has something like 9 or 10 different tabs in his workspace, with >12 applications in each tab – so I’ll stop here. But I’ll definitely ask Sharon for some screenshots to spread the word around.

IBM/Lotus User Forum – 3 days away

Published September 6, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Been getting a lot of feedback from customers and colleagues about the importance of this user forum, and we definitely plan to host more like it, with 2-3 customer success stories and an IBM demo. The event page at ibm.com/il is also live (4 days), where we’ll upload the slides and some pics from the event. The expected attendance is surprising, with some 110 people (!): over 70 RSVPed at FB, others commented at TheMarker Cafe (here, here and here), dozens have either email/text me, and some registered at friendfeed. Amazing!

This is actually the first event at IBM Israel (that I’m aware of at least) that was advertised using social media only, without the traditional DM (direct marketing) tactics – email, distribution lists, advertising, articles, interactive, phone calls, etc. Sometime next week, after we’ll have time to study and evaluate the outcome, I’ll post my impressions (and lessons learnt) of organizing an event using social media only.

In the meantime, I’ve conculded my intro presentation (first slide above), which will be posted after the event at ibm.com/il/news/events/cm1 and my slideshare space. The presentations of Sharon Ben Haim (Ministry of Finance) and Gabby Shoval (Menora Insurance) will also be available at ibm.com/il.

See you all Monday @ 15:30 !

Magic over Lotus – The Ministry of Finance

Published July 21, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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Spend couple of hours this morning at The Ministry of Finance (MOF), a veteran Lotus customer, with some 1,200 employees spread out mostly in Israel and some in locations worldwide.

Lotus was introduced to the MOF back in 1997 (!), with Lotus Notes 4.5. Since then, dozens of applications were developed, including SMS (text messages), fax server, document manager, scanner, meeting rooms reservation, car pool and many more. Particularly I liked the SMS application: open up a new email, and instead of inserting an email address in the ‘To’ field, you write ‘mobilenumber@SMS’, and Lotus Notes identify the ‘@SMS’ and changes the ‘Text’ field into SMS template. Brilliant !

The MOF is also a green business, paperless office. Their internal document management repository was developed back in 2002, and currently holds over 15GB of data – documents, spreadsheets, presentations, faxes, scanned newspapers and more. Nothing is printed, everything is saved in a Lotus Notes DB and the users can share content easily, across the network.

Brilliant usage of Lotus Notes and Domino. I was trully surprised of what they did.

While on the matter of customer successes, here’s an event worth writing down.
Mark your calendars for Monday, September 8th: KM and Collaboration User Forum, where IBM customers will present some of the work they’re doing over our Software solutions. The IT manager of MOF is already in the speakers list.

Links:
Ministry of Finance, Israel
IBM Software for a Greener World
KM and Collaboration User Forum – Monday, Sep. 8th, IBM Israel HQ

Seeing the value of LND in Israel

Published May 3, 2008 Uncategorized 4 Comments
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During the past 2 weeks I met different customers and business partners, discussing how we can better communicate the excellent value of Lotus collaboration solutions. This whole marketing and communication aspect of Lotus Software has been discussed both internally and externally for some time now, and even my friends Alan and Ed across the pond are facing similar customer questions.

Marketing is an issue, not only in Israel. Alex and myself are working hard to change that, in every way imaginable. I hope you will see a difference soon.

The CIO of Israel Securities Authority told me that Lotus Notes/Domino is an excellent platform, stable and secure – I only wish more people would know about it. When I travel to conferences in Europe, everyone are using Lotus Notes. In Israel, only a hand-full of colleagues. ISA are an IBM case study, and we mention them in every customer meeting, and invite them to tell their story when ever possible.

Earlier this week I sat down with the Israel Security Agency, also known as ‘Shabak’ (our FBI).
The last time we met, it was with different people, so I handed the guys (and one lady) my business card. Other than their first names, they were pretty scrimp on details…
Shabak are a veteran Lotus Notes/Domino customer, doing incredible work with the platform. Needless to say security is always an issue and ‘down-time’ is not in their vocabulary.
We met to discuss future collaboration solutions, and understand how those can integrate within their priorities. They were highly impressed with the capabilities of Lotus Sametime Client (they are running Lotus Notes with the embed Sametime client – chat & awareness), especially the VoIP integration and Eclipse as a platform. Lotus Quickr also interest them, particularly since they’re running massive Domino DBs and need to find a better way to share information across teams (store once – share forever), other than email.

Although the high degree of security and classification, Shabak are open to Web 2.0 solutions, as well as Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Only recently they allowed 4 employees to open a public blog, sharing their daily routine with the public. The goal of the initiative is intended more at luring potential employees, but the blog method grants them douze points.

I also met with HSBC Israel this week, a global Lotus account, with roughly 300,000 employees, spread across 10,000 offices in 80+ countries. They use Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime Client, and couldn’t be happier. I even showed the IT manager how we can chat on Sametime, using the BleedYellow community. They are looking into team collaboration and social software solutions, and seeing E2.0 solutions as a business priority – which is very refreshing to hear.

LND is an excellent platform for collaboration, and there are more examples I can share. Lotus Software has grown for the 14th consecutive quarter, we gained market share, over 140 million Lotus Notes customers, 100 million Lotus Sametime corporate users, 850+ developers working on the portfolio, Linux and Mac versions are already available.
Yellow is the new black, haven’t you heard?

Links:
HSBC Israel
Shabak (Israel Security Agency)
Israel Securities Authority
IBM case study – Israel Securities Authority
Sam Lawrence – Why hasn’t marketing duked it out?
Andrew McAfee – The mechanism of online emergence
Ed Brill – Sending a message to management
Alan Lepofsky – Introducing a revolutionary software platform…



Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.